Hi,
Sorry for the long post. I have a 2 year old daughter and a 1 year old daughter both with the same dad but it is very complicated between us. Their Dad has never lived with us as he hasn’t been able to afford to and tbh I wouldn’t want him to anyway, he comes round to mine most days to spend time with the girls, drops the girls at nursery and me to work, helps with shopping every now and again and little bits to help out like tidying, but I do mostly everything as it’s my home. He doesn’t live with us so not once has he ever done bath time with the girls, he doesn’t make their breakfast, dinner or lunch, has never got up with them in the night, never got up with them in the morning made them breakfast and got them ready for the day as he has never had the girls over night. I recently started back at work 2 days a week and have put the girls into nursery as I couldn’t rely on him to look after the girls while I’m at work as he has messed me about before. He does pay child maintenance but constantly tries to get me to cancel the maintenance as he says he will have more money to help me out rather than paying child maintenance fees as he always complains about having no money. He gets pissed off talking to me about this as clearly he doesn’t want to pay. I still struggle with paying all the bills and obviously nursery is expensive but I do get some help from universal credit. I am so so fed up and I feel trapped as I have no one else around for support. He very rarely offers to give me a break and time to myself and when we have set a schedule in the past for him to have the girls he will moan about having them on his own or literally beg me to go out with them so he doesn’t have to take care of them alone. I usually give in because I want to make sure the girls are being looked after properly as he can get very stressed out and angry which I don’t like, But this means I get no proper time to myself and it’s making me feel absolutely exhausted and grumpy constantly as it’s hard work looking after two toddlers. On top of this every time he is around me he is constantly pressuring me to sleep with him when I have completely lost all interest in that and it’s not nice being hassled all the time and he doesn’t like being told no and will get in a mood with me a lot about this. In arguments he will say a lot of nasty things like how I’m on my own and I have no one, he feels sorry for me, he feels sorry for the girls having a mum like me, calls me names and says that I’m crazy etc, I just don’t know what to do and looking for advice on how I can feel happy again and be strong enough to be a single mum with absolutely zero help from family or friends. I am constantly feeling like I want to get away from all this as it is such hard work and so draining.